$591 Million Verdict Forces Big Tobacco to Fund Louisiana Smoking Cessation Program

For five decades, major cigarette manufacturers told the American public that the addictive and harmful properties of their products were uncertain or overstated. A New Orleans jury concluded otherwise. On May 21, 2004, a Civil District Court jury in Orleans Parish returned a $590.9 million verdict against Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Brown and Williamson, ordering the companies to fund a ten-year statewide smoking cessation program for Louisiana residents who began smoking before September 1, 1988.

The class covered more than 200,000 Louisiana smokers who the jury found had been misled through decades of deliberate fraud. The tobacco companies, the evidence showed, had concealed what they knew about nicotine addiction and the health consequences of long-term cigarette use. The class sought no compensatory damages for individual injuries. Instead, plaintiffs argued the defendants owed the class a funded program to help people quit the habit the companies had worked to sustain.

Joseph Bruno, a plaintiffs' lawyer from Bruno and Bruno whose colleague Stephen Bruno was among the class counsel of record, told reporters after the verdict that nothing like it had ever been returned in an American courtroom. 'For the first time ever in this country, a jury has awarded a comprehensive smoking cessation program, not dollar damages,' he said. The program as ordered covered nicotine patches, gum, telephone quit lines, counseling, and community-based anti-smoking campaigns.

The case went through two trial phases. Phase I, which addressed liability, concluded in July 2003. Phase II, addressing the scope and funding of the cessation remedy, produced the May 2004 jury verdict, followed by the trial court's formal judgment on June 30, 2004.

Tobacco defendants appealed, and the Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal issued its decision on April 23, 2010. The appellate court amended the judgment to $241,540,488 plus judicial interest, reducing the figure from the trial court's post-verdict adjustment of $263.5 million but affirming the core liability finding and the cessation-program remedy. The companies then sought U.S. Supreme Court review. On June 27, 2011, the Supreme Court denied certiorari, leaving the Fourth Circuit's judgment in place. With accrued interest, the total obligation reached approximately $270 million.